Rennrad Blog aus dem Leben eines werbeschaffenden Rennrad Fahrers.

Le Tour De France 2016 – personal highlights

Le Tour de France is finally finished. Chris Froome got the yellow jersey for the third time. Some personal thoughts and moments to remember.

Adam Yates and the Piranha Plant

There were many crashes, but this one stands out of all. Adam Yates was close to finish, as this air floated banner crashed down right in front at him, causing a crash. It stands out, because it’s perfect. Look at the position. It hits Adam right in front of his wheel. He was riding perfectly in the middle of the road. The mark touched down perfectly in the middle. They were perfectly aligned. Look at the timing! It was just perfect. Would he have been just a second earlier, he would have passed that surprise. One second later and he would probably would have managed to go on the brakes. But with this timing, it was simply impossible. It reminded me of the evil Piranha Plants from Super Mario becoming real. And Adam proved, cyclist are tough badasses, as he got his wounds stitched and was back on the bike next day and winning the white jersey at the end of Le Tour. Props Adam.

Froome Style

Gangnam Style? Froome Style! The way Chris Froom took the descent on Stage 8 was craaaazy. No, it was insane. Hanging on the bars with 80kmh alone is insane enough. Doing this and keep kicking the pedals hard, so the chain is jumping is even more crazy. I know some others did this style before, but for me this will be remembered for now as „Froome Style Descent“.

Where is my Pina?

Come on, Chris Froome running up the Mount Ventoux is immediate modern sports history! What a chaos! Beside the running, look how lost he looks like on that yellow neutral parts bike, without his custom Froome Pinarello while the peloton overruns him from the back, here at 1:57. By the way, I really appreciated the decision of the UCI, despite some say it’s a Lex Froome. If you saw whole race you could clearly see, he dominated it. It would be a shame and very un-sportive, if a chaotic crowd as a result of bad organization would defeat that effort of 4 hours with no personal or team fault.

Photofinish Stage 3

There are close finishes, and there was stage 3 of this Tour. I took a literal screenshot for myself. How close was that? 2cm?

Multicam

This was the first sports event I followed on mainly on mobile devices. I got an Eurosport player plan and used it on my iPhone, MacBook and iPad seamlessly. Despite the ability to watch live broadcast on small screens, I totally fell in love with their beta Multicam option.

You can choose up to three streams from the event to watch simultaneously. While you usually put the normal moderated TV stream on first, it interesting to put raw motorbike cams on 2 and 3. They simply continued broadcasting all the time, live from the tour. The moto guys put their cams on the legs, into the grass, tried to catch a nice frame. You stayed on it all the time, bringing you close and really intimate into the tour. Beside that you could get live data overlaid, showing rider times, etc. Basically Eurosport gives access to that event, while you become your own director for it. In times of YouTube, VoD, Periscope that’s the future of sports entertainment for me. More please.

Still nobody like Pina

First I thought, Pinarello, as adorable as your bikes are, you need someone to take care of your social media. One day after Le Tour 2016, Pinarello was „still nobody like us, 2015“.